And when the hell is Spike going to show up and and eat that annoying sister?
I originally titled this simply "Buffie the Bionic Bartender," but anyone can see at a glance that the Jaime Sommers who walks through the first episode of the reimagined "Bionic Woman" is no bartender. No, she's a substitute teacher who is also a subsitute bartender. It's been years since I spent much time in a bar, so maybe things have changed, but I can't ever remember a bartender who didn't affect a certain detached breeziness or coziness or, at least, personality. None of that is evident in this Jamie Sommers. She tends bar with all the realism a substitute host on Saturday Night Live-- trying to sell a skit she didn't "get" to begin with.
I was looking forward to this series. I still am.
Visually, it's gorgeous. The dark sets are well designed and well lit. The production crew must have watched “Blade Runner” like a zillion times, and they paid attention. That's something.
Against all odds, the shadowy military organization that has rebuilt Jamie Sommers is played with respect. These producers have obviously learned the lessons of "Stargate" and "Battlestar: Galactica," that most military folks who have not sold their souls to a guy named "Bush" are intelligent and capable, and to portray them as unintuituive, two dimensional cartoonish buffoons is an insult to buffoons everywhere--not to mention to the viewers.
And then there's that evil blonde who stole the show. I knew Katie Sackhoff could act--her version of "Starbuck" is clearly one of the five or six best characters on Battlestar: Galactica--but damn, girl, where did you get them chops? And why you been hiding them?
It's very clear that Sackhoff knows what she's about. She's the original Bionic Woman, i.e., she's Lindsay Wagner, the REAL Jaime Sommers, and she's PISSED to find that she's the victim of bionic identity theft. Happily, the title of the series, "Bionic Woman," is ambiguous enough that sometime in Februay '08, the producers can kill off the putative lead played by Michelle Ryan [I already have a name for that episode: "Intel Inside"].
After that, the series can become the story of a bionic lesbian who cruises karaoke clubs and sings the HELL out of Melissa Etheridge songs. Damn, there's a show I'd like to see!
SPEAKING OF RIPPING OFF JOSS WHEEDON: I also watched the program called something like "Angel sans Humor" (aka "Moonlight"). Gee, where did they get the idea of using an interview with a vampire as a framing device? And that sleep inducing voice over--how'd they come up with that? The ingenuity of these hollywood types never ceases to amaze me.
I would like this show to succeed. I don't see why it should. There's a fundamental lack of commitment where it's soul ought to be.
What the Joss Wheedon understands, and the producers of Battlestar Galactica, and the Bionic Woman understand is that shows like this have to make a commitment to their viewers. Not to ratings at all cost (which they are not going to get) but to fans. The show has to practically scream, We'll be for you if you'll be for us, regardless of who else watches. Angel, Buffy, Battlestar, and even this first episode of Bionic Woman seem to have that kind of commitment to the ideal of commitment. I don't see any hint of that in acting, the writing, or the standard tv action flick direction on Moonlight.
There is one nice twist. Sophia Myles, who apparently I should recognize but don't from Underworld, plays a reporter who our vampire hero saved as a young child and has been looking after since. I like where this could go. The conflicts that someone he sees as a daughter is going to be looking at him as (presumably) an attractive man. If they don't shrink from this or sensationalize it, they have opened a possibility of real thought. Would an immortal feel feel it was wrong to have sex with a woman he has mentored since she was a child? Why or why not?
Let's see.
7 comments:
Please explain more about how the 70's was a bloodless era in popular culture. What do you mean?
You want me to be specific? To illustrate my point with examples and details? Criminy...
Ok, let's see. When I wrote that comment, I was thinking about Barry Manilow and Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, and, for that matter, the 6 Million dollar Man, Star Wars, and the original Battlestar Gallactica. "Bloodless" here means something like "plastic", "overly neat." I would include most disco and the music of the Eagles in this category, but only because over familiarity has probably bred a certain undeserved contempt...
I most certainly was not thinking of 70's cinema, which I consider to be a sort of Golden Age of the Auteur--films like Jeremiah Johnson, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and (need I mention?) Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now.
For that matter, I also clearly was not thinking of "Good Times" and "Maude," or the music of Stevie Wonder. Don't get me started on Stevie Wonder...
I am overwhelmed with relief that you acknowledged J.J. and "keeping your head above water, making your way when you can/ temporary lay-offs (good times), easy prey to rip-offs (good times), ain't we lucky we got 'em, (insert drums) Good Ti-i-i-imes.
But damn it, old boy, what say ye of "The Partridge Family"???
Hee hee. Thanks for the explanation. When I think of bloodless, I think of ... well, shows without wounds and bandages and gauze and antiseptic, which would certainly exclude MASH. Oh, I had the biggest crush on Alan Alda. I learned everything I know about war from Hawkeye, Charles, Major Hoolihan, Frank, Radar, Captain Pierce, B.J., Klinger, and the visiting psychiatrist.
Speaking of psychiatrists, have you forgotten Charlie Brown and the blood-thirsty Lucy with her 5 cent pscyhiatric kiosk?
psychiatric, that is.
My problem with MASH was that I identified with Major Burns. Still, I watched it until they killed Colonel Blake. I picked up the rest of the show in reruns years later.
In my mind, it's linked with Hill Street Blues, especially that last episode, which I watched in a storm underneath a tree in a park across the street on a tiny portable black and white tv, because our power had gone out.
Oh, yeah --- I forgot about Hill Street Blues. Others: One Day at a Time, the Jeffersons. All in all, not a bad TV decade.
What a cool memory, by the way --- of watching the television in a storm in the park. One of my similar memories is of reading while sitting in the basement of the courthouse in Cullman, Alabama for a few days during the big tornado outbreak of '74. There were something like 23 tornados.
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